


How Jimmy Page (Maybe) Made a Deal With the Devil and Lived to Tell the Tale

by hesychasm (Jintian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-14
Updated: 2007-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/hesychasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has a birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Jimmy Page (Maybe) Made a Deal With the Devil and Lived to Tell the Tale

  
"Happy Birthday," Sam said, and thrust a Wal-mart shopping bag at him.

"Look, man, you giving me underwear on my birthday is just -- not right. Not to mention cheap-ass, since it was your turn to buy it anyway."

"The underwear's in _that_ bag." Sam pointed at the table. "This is different. C'mon, I've missed I don't know how many of your birthdays? I figured it was time I got you something special."

Dean opened the bag and pulled out the -- book? No, it was a DVD. He turned it over to look at the cover and -- "Oh, sweet baby Jesus," he whispered. "That's pretty special, all right."

"I thought you'd like it," Sam said smugly. "And I got one of those cords, so we can hook up my laptop to any TV set."

"Ohh, this makes up for _all_ the birthdays." Dean pulled out his pocket knife and started attacking the cellophane, careful not to damage the edges of the outside covering.

"Actually," Sam said, "I can't believe you don't own it already."

"Never had a DVD player, remember?"

"You could've bought one. They're light enough and it's not like you'd've been spending your own money anyway."

Dean paused in the middle of admiring the shiny cover, the brown swells and curves. "Well, Sammy, that's why you're the brains and I'm the beauty of this little outfit."

Sam rolled his eyes and snatched the box out of Dean's hands. "All right, time to see why these guys get you so hot and bothered."

"Hey!" Dean said. "Careful with that --"

Sam got his laptop set up, Dean hovering anxiously over his shoulder, and popped the first disc in. "Huh. I didn't realize there were _two_ discs. A little excessive, don't you think?"

"Hey, when you're the shit, flaunt it. Now sit back and hush, Sammy. You're about to get schooled in the ways of complete and total domination."

Sam snorted and crossed his arms.

On the cheap motel TV, a bushy-haired person walked out onto a spotlit stage, met by screams and wild applause.

"Oh, _God_ ," Dean said, leaning forward. "This fucking _rules_." He shifted in his seat, rubbing sweaty palms on his knees.

"They haven't even started yet!"

"Shhh."

And then there they all were: four gods among men, the four who'd been rocking Dean's world in ways great and small -- mostly great -- ever since he'd been an itchy-balled kid looking for the answers, the four who had _all_ the answers, who haunted his dreams and his fantasies and --

"Dude," Sam exclaimed in horror. "His pants are so tight you can see his whole _crotch_!"

"Shut up, that's the way they dressed back then."

"How can he even _move_ in those?"

"Because he's Robert Plant and he owns your ass, so could you quit being a bitch and just _watch_?"

Dean tuned out Sam's sputtering and focused on the band. He'd seen a few bootleg videos, and of course _The Song Remains the Same_ , but this concert was early, mythic. Everyone was crystal clear, smoother and skinnier than he'd ever seen them before: Bonham was rocking out, Jones was grooving, and Page -- fucking _Jimmy Page_ was on the fucking screen and just looking at him with all that witchy hair in his face you could see he was the baddest badass motherfucker to ever pick up a guitar, he was _killing_ it, no question he was the man and he'd always _be_ the man. Plant was wailing away, spinning and shaking his hair like the golden god he was, and Jimmy just went on being Jimmy fucking Page right on Dean's TV.

After a while Sam stopped chortling whenever Plant thrust his hips, and started actually paying attention. Good, maybe he'd learn what _real_ music was for once and quit trying to constantly switch the radio to Coldplay or whatever.

When Page started using the violin bow on "Dazed and Confused," his hair now totally obscuring his face, Sam sat up and uncrossed his arms.

"You sure that guy never made a deal with the devil?"

"Dude, _no_. He's a musical genius."

"C'mon, though, this is just _eerie_. And didn't he live in a haunted house?"

"Yeah, because he's hardcore, not because he sold his soul. Anyway, he's way past the ten year deadline now."

"Maybe _his_ crossroad demon gave him a longer contract."

"Sammy. Didn't happen. Besides which, shut up, dude, you're making me miss this."

"Uh, it's a DVD and you own it now. You can rewind or rewatch any time." Sam paused. "Wait, why did I tell you that? You'll never give back my computer now."

Dean smirked. Page had gone back to shredding it and he and Plant were doing their screechy voice/guitar exchange, and they were rocking all over the stage, and now even Jones was freaking out. Dean couldn't imagine what it must have been like to be in that audience, knowing he was watching rock mythology in the making. He felt like it was changing his life just to be watching it now, twenty-seven years later.

"Damn," he breathed. "Page was twenty-six during this concert. Younger than me, even."

It was weirdly depressing to hear that out loud. He watched as Page hurled into "White Summer" and "Black Mountain Side," totally unaccompanied except for the occasional punctuation from Bonham, sitting down hunched and rocking over his guitar, the notes frothing out of him, eyes closed, black hair tangled over his pasty, sweaty face. Already a legend. And Plant was what, twenty-one or twenty-two? Sammy's age? And Bonham, too. Shit, they were all younger than him. What had he been _doing_ with his life?

The band was smoothing into "What Is And What Should Never Be," and Dean had good memories of getting more than one girl to unfasten a shirt or a zipper while this song was playing -- something about the bass line they just couldn't resist -- but he couldn't focus on it anymore.

It was stupid to be comparing himself to rock stars. Like, when had Jimmy Page ever faced down a spirit or exorcised a demon? Okay, maybe he'd encountered a few in his haunted house. But Plant? _That_ guy had definitely been otherwise occupied brushing his hair and tightening the seam of his crotch. So they had millions of dollars and entourages and women throwing themselves at them. It wasn't demon hunting.

But then, demon hunting wasn't millions of dollars and entourages and women throwing themselves at him.

Dammit. Could he just relax and enjoy his own damn birthday for _once_?

Bonham was laying waste to the stage with his "Moby Dick" solo. Sam tilted his head. "Okay, this one _definitely_ spent some time hanging out at a crossroad."

Dean grunted. "He did die young. And not in a pretty way."

"Guess that's the price you pay to play."

Dean pursed his lips and didn't say anything.

Sam looked over at him. "What's wrong with you?" Then, "Are you still thinking about that age thing?"

Well, they were pretty attuned to each other by now. He thought about brushing Sam off, but he figured that for a lost cause: Sam's new thing was diagnosing Dean's moods and attempting to cure them, like he was trying to make up for all the years he'd been a self-centered little whiner whose best talent was giving Dad a hard time. "Dude," Dean said, compromising, "it's not a big deal."

"Nah, something's bothering you. Is it the DVD? I've still got the receipt -- we can return it --"

"The DVD stays!"

"So what's up? C'mon, man, I'm sitting here listening to cats castrating each other --" Dean glared at him "-- and it's all for you, so grant me a little openness."

Jesus, he detested Sam's Psych 101 crap. "It's nothing, dude. Just...feeling my years, is all."

"Dean, you're twenty-eight, not seventy-eight. You're not exactly an old man."

"Spoken just like somebody still in his early twenties."

Sam hit the mute button on the TV, silencing Robert Plant's promises to give them a whole lotta love. "So what's dogging you? Fear of death?"

"Not an unheard of end for people who do what we do," Dean pointed out.

"Dean, you've got more lives than a cat. You've escaped dying twice already."

"Thanks, that'd be a real comfort except for that whole thing where the third time's the charm," Dean muttered. "Anyway, no, it's not dying. Or -- I don't know. It's not _just_ dying."

"Yeah?" Sam prodded.

"It's being useless," Dean said reluctantly. "Meaningless."

Sam looked at him in unabashed surprise. "Dean," he said slowly, "you're like the _least_ useless person I know."

Dean shrugged. He didn't know a way to explain it to Sam, how to put this weird and sudden melancholy into words. Sam had no conception of it: he'd gone from purpose to purpose, letting his own drive take him where he needed, first a college student, then a prospective lawyer, then demon hunting when he'd decided that was important. These were meanings he'd chosen for himself. And along the way he'd acquired people who would remember him after he died, people who remembered him _now_ , sent him cards on the Internet for his birthday, kept in touch while he was on the road, people who weren't required by blood to do it but rather did it out of choice and love and -- fuck, okay, he could barely even explain this to _himself_.

He suddenly didn't want to be sitting here in a ratty motel room in Bumfuck, Oklahoma watching old Led Zeppelin concerts while his kid brother rolled his eyes and snarked about it. He didn't know where he wanted to be instead; he just didn't want to be where he already _was_.

"Gonna go for a drive," Dean said.

He got up, grabbed his keys, and left before Sam could say a word to give him pause.

*

The thing about Bumfuck, Oklahoma, though, was that it was pretty much nothing but bumfuckery as far as the eye could see. Besides their motel, there was a scattering of ramshackle houses, a gas station that doubled as a grocery store, and a roadhouse that looked like it had last seen real business when Zeppelin were still together. He drove about twenty miles in search of something better before finally giving up and heading back.

It was hitting dusk already, turning the line where the sky met the flat empty land orange and purple. The lot around the roadhouse was unpaved dirt and gravel, already occupied by a few cars and trucks, most likely relocated from the ramshackle houses. Inside, Dean nodded at all the patrons who turned to stare at him curiously.

Not a hot chick in the house. Typical.

He headed for the bar, where all they had was bottles of Bud, Coors, and MGD. He worked his way steadily through three of the latter, each closer to room temperature than cold, watching the fuzzy TV in the corner playing some muted show about fishing, shoulders hunched in a signal to warn off strangers.

Tomorrow morning they were going to check out of the motel, get back in the Impala, and drive further west. They had places to go, things to do, but today he was in between. Today he was observing the passage of another year and the beginning of the next. If he was going to choose any day of the year to sit and drink alone, why not this one?

Just when he'd started on his fourth, his cell phone rang. Sam.

"You at that roadhouse?"

"Where else?"

"Want me to come by?"

"Nah, don't need you cramping my style."

"Well, I just wanted to let you know I was so bored I watched your DVDs. The crotch situation got even _worse_. I think I'm both nauseated and a little turned on. I can see what you find so appealing about them."

"Funny."

"Anyway, I paused it before they got to 'Achilles Last Stand.' I know you like the guitar in that one."

He was just tipsy enough to be touched. He'd only talked about it a million times, but still. Sam remembered.

He was definitely tipsy enough to not analyze it to death. "Okay," Dean said. "I'll be back in a few."

"Sure, take your time," Sam said. "Jimmy and I aren't going anywhere."

"You'd better not. Those are _my_ birthday DVDs."

Sam snorted into the phone and hung up.

He took another swallow of room temperature beer. When he got back, there'd be more of Sam trying to make him get over it, like he could cure getting older just by talking about it enough. Well, maybe he could let Sam be right on this one: maybe he should be satisfied he _did_ make it to another year, that he was even sitting here at all. He remembered reading an interview of Page's once where he'd said he was surprised to be over thirty. He hadn't thought he'd make it that far.

Well, over thirty seemed like a good target age for a guy who wasn't even a rock star. He made a little toast to himself in the dusty mirror behind the bar. "See you again in five years. Nice round number, think you can handle it?" He tucked a few bills under the bottle, then stood, regarding his reflection for a moment. "Five years," he repeated. "After that, you're on your own. Deal?"

His reflection nodded.

"Deal."

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and criticism welcome.


End file.
